there was a (little) girl
by whimsycality
Summary: There was a little girl who had a little curl right in the middle of her forehead. And when she was good, she was very very good; and when she was bad, she was horrid. Always-a-girl Bruce Banner.


**AN:** So, first of all, this is a trigger warning for Bruce Banner's unhappy life, with an emphasis on abuse and a fairly graphic though brief description of a canonical character death and the infamous suicide attempt.

Also, unless stated otherwise, assume the Betty in question is Banner and not Ross, cause having them with the same name sounded adorable in my head and then got super complicated in practice.

* * *

**_there was a (little) girl_**

* * *

Betty Banner knew what anger was - how it felt, how it looked, how it tasted - before she learned how to tie her shoes. (Which was at age two - she always was a precocious child.) Maybe that was the problem all along.

She knew what it looked like from the outside. Wide open mouths and bulging eyes and fingers clenched so tightly they were white from the strain. She knew the sound of raised voices, the sound of her heart beating too fast, the sound of muffled cries of fear. She knew the taste of her own blood in her mouth, copper and salt, more bitter than any penny.

She knew what it felt like from the inside. Red and hot and helpless, a pathetic little poison that ate her up from the inside and never did any damage to any one else. (One day there would be a different color she associated with blinding rage. One day the damage would be far from self-contained. But she didn't know that yet, couldn't have dreamed it if she'd tried.)

Betty Banner knows a lot of things, very few of them happy.

She likes to learn things. It doesn't make things better. It doesn't make her safer or make her mom's tears go away or make her neighbors do anything more than cluck disapprovingly in their direction. But she likes it anyway. Learning is better than knowing, and it usually hurts less.

She likes learning the golden ratio and finding examples of it in the world around her. She likes learning which books can make her smile and forget all the painful things she knows. She likes looking through magnifying glasses, and later microscopes, and seeing things that no one can see without them - little tiny secrets holding the mysteries of life and death.

She never wanted to know what a human skull looked like when caved in from too much force. Or that her mother, who loved with fierce intensity despite every dark secret in their life, could ever resemble an empty, broken doll. She never wanted to know about custody hearings where relatives don't show up, or what the foster system was like from the inside. She never wanted to know about sterile walls and cold cots and other children with mean eyes and meaner fingers.

She still doesn't know which is worse: feeling loved but afraid, or feeling unwanted.

Learning is her only solace now and she pursues it with an intensity that blocks out everything else. There is no more anger, no petty bullying worth notice, no sexist remarks about her propensity for books and beakers, no loneliness that cuts deep enough to leave her breathless with tears at night. There are only her studies and facts and questions, and eventually labs and the soothing scent of antiseptic cleaning agents.

It is a long time before anyone penetrates her shield of blinding intelligence and utter indifference to social interactions. When someone does, it is with a pair of smiling red lips and laughing blue eyes and a brain as brilliant and beautiful as the woman it belongs to.

Betty Ross is a summer storm, causing thundering heart beats and electric bolts of attraction and washing away the pain and emptiness that preceded her arrival in Betty Banner's life. The other woman loves that they both have the same name, and revels in the confusion it causes their classmates and professors. She loves that they are both in love with the microscopic world that lurks beneath the surface of their skin, and never makes Betty feel strange or different for being so intelligent that her teachers often don't know what do with her. She seems to love everything about Betty Banner, and has no problem telling her so at every possible moment.

Betty is stunned and overwhelmed and completely out of her depth. The initial rush of disorientation fades into a happy kind of daze as the other woman completely overtakes Betty's life with an easy kind of grace that makes Betty's heart beat faster with awe and desire. They study together, binge on late night chinese food together, and end up living together when Betty Ross manipulates Betty Banner's original roommate, and the housing system, into making a trade.

Eventually, and just for their own use, they settle on BiBi for Betty Banner, something her mother used to call her when she was very small, and just plain B for Betty Ross, who has a serious crush on both Buffy and Faith and makes Bibi watch it with her every Monday night.

The friendship between the two of them quickly becomes the most precious thing in Betty's life. When it blossoms into romance by the simple expedient of B huffing an exasperated sigh, dropping into her lap, and kissing the living daylights out of Betty, she thinks she might actually explode from happiness. She can't imagine life without the other woman and her passion for absolutely everything, and shakes both of them awake with nightmares in which she returns to the kind of desolate loneliness she'd lived before B swept into her life.

By the time they are professors together instead of students, the nightmares are few and far between and Betty's life has settled into a kind of contented bliss and academic normality that on bad days she still finds hard to believe. Well, by normality she means complete and total domination, because if there is any place that the two Betty's are better together than the bedroom, it's the lab.

B's father is the only dark cloud on the horizon. A conservative military man who is less than thrilled with his daughter's choice of partner, his constant disapproval is one of the only things to dim B's constant joy in life and for that alone Betty hates him. Daddy issues and science, two of the major and inescapable themes of their relationship.

Two themes that collide when General Ross asks them both to sign onto a military-funded research project at their university.

Betty is less than thrilled to be working for the man who has caused her girlfriend so much distress, but in the interest of family peace, and the hope that someday they will be legally allowed to marry in their state and might wish his presence at the wedding, she says yes.

Against her will, she finds the research fascinating, and soon all of her misgivings are forgotten as she and B hover on the edge of significant breakthroughs in the field of radiation resistance. Working with B will never be anything less than thrilling, and this research is important, could help scientists, relief workers, and soldiers the world over.

She should have listened to her anger and her worry and told B's father to fuck off.

She will regret not doing so for the rest of her life.

Things go wrong, horribly wrong, and rage she hasn't felt since her father died freshman year of college rises up within her, tainted poison green. When the green, and the rage, fades, she is surrounded by destruction. B is in the hospital, the General has his entire unit trying to find her so she can be locked up and dissected, and her life has gone spectacularly to shit.

The sight of B, broken and bruised in a hospital bed, is all she can see when she closes her eyes. Her nightmares return and grow, twisted terrors where her mother's body bleeds into her lover's and hers is now the face of the monster standing over them.

Her waking life isn't much better, a haze of fear and barely controlled rage as she runs and runs and tries not to break people when she loses the constant battle with her suddenly no-longer-inner demons.

Far from pathetic, her anger now has the power to topple buildings, and she is afraid of it in ways she was never afraid of her father. What brings the most fear are the moments when she enjoys the haze of green and fury. The moments when she welcomes the destruction she is capable of, the ultimate proof that she is no longer a scared little girl hiding in the corner from the monster in her home.

There is something immensely freeing and horrifically hateful about _being_ the monster.

People are afraid of her. _B_ might be afraid of her. Betty can't imagine anything worse than the best person she's ever known being afraid of her, of what she's capable of. Except possibly the best person she's ever known being dead because of her and what she's capable of.

She eventually runs far enough and long enough that the military are no longer dogging her every move. She has space to breathe and in those breaths she finds only despair. She hurt the woman she loved. In the end, the destruction of her own life, the military officers injured and killed in pursuit of her, none of that measures up to the stark pain of seeing Betty Ross in a hospital and knowing that she is responsible.

That, and her ever-present nightmares, are enough to overwhelm the survival instinct that has carried her this far. It is time to end the cycle of anger and pain and fear that is her birthright.

She procures a gun and passage to Greenland. She doesn't write a note, she doesn't want her body or the secrets it contains to be found. She travels far enough into the uninhabited and frozen areas of the landmass that it should be decades before her body is found, if ever. She takes a deep breath, places the barrel of the gun in her mouth, and pulls the trigger.

Everything that follows is a confusing flicker of images, sensation, and fury that feels strangely self-directed, as if the monster inside of her is angry that she tried to rid the world of them both.

The despair that she sinks into when she realizes that she's alive is thicker, deeper, than it had been before she tried to kill herself. It is months before she emerges from it, but when she does, her mind feels clearer than before. If she cannot end herself and the threat she poses, then she needs to understand it. She needs to turn to the science that has always been her solace and use it to find answers to what happened, to what she did to herself.

Running and hiding are no longer enough. It is time to do more than react to the circumstances she finds herself in. She is brilliant, that's what got her into this mess, and she is strong even without the monster beneath her skin. She can and will figure out how to fix this. And if she can't do that, then she will make damn sure that no one like the General ever benefits from what happened.

This time she runs with purpose. She plans and she plots and she works harder than ever to contain the anger that has ruined so many things. She takes controlled risks. She needs information, and getting it requires access to the internet, which means hiding out in more modernized places than she's been frequenting, and taking chances at exposure.

Not trying would pose an even bigger threat to her safety, and everyone else's.

She researches for two years. Two years of libraries and internet cafes and three stolen laptops. Two years of brief moments of hope and endless months of frustration. Two years of close calls and fewer and fewer instances of the monster breaking loose that she doesn't incite herself. Two years of resisting every urge to contact B, to hear her voice, to find out if she hates Betty, or misses her BiBi with the same fierce intensity that Betty misses her B.

After that, she cannot learn anymore on her own. Not without access to facilities it isn't safe for her to even be within a few miles of. She has to reach out and it takes weeks of agonizing before she settles on Dr. Sterns, whose expertise is in fields similar to hers, and who doesn't have any connection to the military that she can find.

Decision made, it still takes a few days to work herself up to actually making contact. When she does, it is under the pseudonym Ms. Scarlet, with painfully fond memories of B defending her theory that Ms. Scarlet was the guilty party in Clue more often than any of the other characters.

When he responds, Dr. Sterns chooses the name Mr. Blue, and Betty wonders if he was simply sticking to the color motif, or if he too had a particular association in mind.

Mr. Blue is pushy, and more than a little suspicious at first, but the lure of research and the evidence of her own expertise is enough to win him over in time. He proves helpful, although not as much as he could be if she gives into his desire for a blood sample. She is still too paranoid to acquiesce to his request, afraid of the toxicity and contamination potential in even a drop. The fact that she's even alive considering the amount of radiation in her cells is frankly unbelievable, and she can't imagine anyone else surviving without the other unique circumstances that led to her condition.

She steals another laptop, the less significant of her morals long since sacrificed to necessity, and makes her way to Brazil. She's spoken Spanish since she was a child, learned at her mother's knee, and her Portuguese isn't as smooth as she would like, but she can communicate effectively.

Despite the loosening of her conscience, she still prefers to pay for things when she can, and gets a job working in a factory. The rampant sexism and sexual harassment she faces every day at work prove to be very effective tests of her temper. She counts every day that she doesn't rip someone's face off as mark of karma in her favor, and works on her self-control every moment she isn't working on getting the monster out from beneath her skin.

Meditation had never been an interest of hers before the monster inside came rampaging through her life. Science was her meditation, bending over a microscope her lotus pose, the taste of B's lips and the satin of her skin the closest she'd ever come to inner peace. Forcing herself to sit and think and breathe without the benefit of any of those things is one of the more difficult things she's ever attempted to master.

Learning to fight, on the other hand; learning to know and control her body in ways she'd never been able to before, well, that is one of the few silver linings in the dark cloud that is Betty Banner's life. The knowledge that she can defend herself, protect herself, without unleashing the monster, makes her feel proud in a way she hasn't in a long time.

Eventually Mr. Blue sends her a flower, a hope for a cure. She distills it in the ramshackle lab she's set up in the favela she calls home and isn't even slightly surprised when it fails to work. Mr. Blue's repeated plea for a blood sample isn't shocking either, and she feels both dread and resignation when she gives in.

There is so much potential for destruction in that small vial, but Mr. Blue is right. If there is any hope of ever truly understanding what happened to her, and how to reverse it, it can't be done with guess work. And it certainly can't be done in her lab.

It takes a shorter amount of time than she expected before he tells her that he can cure her. He tells her he needs more data, data that is in the one place she wants to see more than anything. Data that is in the one place she can never go.

She cannot sleep. Cannot decide what to do. Cannot decide where the larger risk lies, in action or inaction.

Her insomnia ends up saving her.

Men in all black, carrying all too familiar and terrifying guns, come for her. All of her control is put to the test, and in the end, under the threat of assault and capture, it fails.

When she wakes, naked and disoriented, there are only flashes of gunfire and flying bodies. She doesn't remember any bodies other than the soldiers and the men from the factory, and hopes she isn't forgetting any civilian casualties. Her neighbors deserved far better than the monster in their midst. She is now in another country entirely, and she is lucky that the first human she sees seems more interested in helping her cover herself than taking advantage of her nudity. The kindness of human beings never fails to amaze her, not after every instance of harm she has suffered at the hands of others.

That kindness sees her in shoes and the kind of loose, stretchy sundress she has learned gives her the best chance of maintaining a shred of dignity after an incident. She gave up on underwear long ago, and bras require an optimism she's long since sacrificed.

Women are viewed as inherently less threatening and suspicious than men, and making her way back into the U.S. is far simpler than some of the other challenges she's faced. Replenishing her supplies and making it back to Virginia is equally easy, at least in the practical sense.

Seeing B with a man. _Happy_ with a man. It hurts more than almost anything since she woke up to find her life torn to pieces by her own hands. It definitely hurts more than bullets, and her inability to catch her breath almost sends her heart rate monitor into dangerous territory as she leans against a tree trunk and fights for control.

Old fears and insecurities are choking her, days when she couldn't believe that this brilliant, amazing, gorgeous woman, wanted _her_. No one ever wanted her, not for long anyways.

Rationally she knows that is has been five years. Five years of no contact, a hospital stay, and questions without answers. But her heart only understands abandonment and the aching pain of loss.

When she has steadied herself against the pain, she makes her way to a different old friend, and a means to an end. Walking the halls of Culver is a surreal experience after all these years, and she struggles to maintain her grip on the present. The echoes of her roars and the answering screams still linger in the walls, and even sitting at a computer brings back a rush of memories. B still hasn't changed her password and Betty smiles as she types in Faith and hits enter. Maybe B hasn't moved on as thoroughly as it looks like she has.

Unfortunately, that is the only good news. The network has been wiped clean of any data pertaining to their research, and it is not safe to linger here where she has so many ties. She packs and goes to tell Stan she's leaving and there's B, sitting with the man she'd kissed earlier, a smile lighting up her face that fades into a shocked frown when she sees Betty.

Betty hides and bites her knuckle almost hard enough to break skin to hold in the sob that threatens to break free. She is right there. The woman she loves is so close that Betty can smell the faint combination of hibiscus and antiseptic that always clung to B's skin. And it doesn't matter. She can't do or say anything or B's life will be in danger - from her and from the whole goddamned army that's after her.

After B disappears back inside the restaurant, Betty doesn't even try to hitchhike or come up with a plan other than getting away, just walks along the side of the road and lets the rain wash away the tear tracks. But a car stops anyway, and when she turns to wave them off, it's B. Water is slicking her white shirt to her skin and there is so much hope and happiness on her face that Betty can't do anything but go to her. Can't do anything but cling to her warmth and her joy and wish that she never had to let her go again.

"You look so different," B says, her voice soft with wonder as she reaches up to touch the curls Betty had cut short in a vain attempt to pass as a man. Her curves had proved far more difficult to hide, as had the lips B had once described as 'insanely kissable', and she'd given up the ruse. It takes everything she has not to kiss B now, and instead she buries her face in the other woman's neck, breathing her in until there's nothing else in the world.

She can't say no to B, never could, and despite every ounce of her that is shrieking that this is a bad idea, Betty goes home with her. B has the data Betty needs, of course she does, she always was the smarter of the two of them, and it breaks Betty's heart to tell her that it doesn't change things. That she can't go with B into work to figure things out because B's father wants to take what Betty's become and distill it the way she distilled that flower and make more monsters, monsters with U.S. Army stamped on their foreheads.

She sleeps in the guest bedroom and dreams of the first time she saw B naked. The softness of her skin, the pink flush of arousal that traveled down her body, the breathy little gasps and laughs she let out when Betty touched her. She wakes with a start and trembling hands and has to practice her breath exercises for thirty minutes before her new heart rate monitor stops beeping.

B gives her some of her own clothes, and being surrounded by her scent doesn't help the lingering arousal as Betty packs up her things and makes them both breakfast. Once she'd been given permission, looking and not touching had never been a strong suit of hers, and she can see the same desire in every glance and finger twitch as she and B move around each other with the awkwardness of former lovers.

B walks with her when she finally, reluctantly, leaves, and they are cutting across campus toward the bus station when Betty sees the man with a gun and knows that it is too late to escape undetected. All she can do is get as far away from B as she can. She _won't_ let the monster hurt her. Her sanity will not survive if B ends up in the hospital again because of her.

But B is stubborn, more stubborn than even Betty, and it is the sight of her being chased by soldiers, not the fear for her own freedom, that pushes Betty over the edge.

After that there is only rage and pain and fear and B's voice, B's face and small fragile body, and then there is a strange sense of peace before nothing at all.

When she wakes, she is exhausted, aching, and cold. She and B are in a cave, and she struggles to remain conscious as B helps her to the nearest town and gets them food and lodging. A hot shower, flashbacks included, helps her wash away the vestiges of the monster, all the monsters, and feel human again. Something changed last night. Something happened that she doesn't understand, and for the first time since the original incident she feels hope that maybe the monster in her skin is capable of more than mindless destruction.

She didn't realize how touch starved she'd become until B's hands are carding through her hair, unravelling the inevitable tangles of her curls. B's lips against her cheek, and then her temple, have her shivering. B slides into her lap and traces her fingers down the sides of Betty's face, her smile sad and full of so much love it makes Betty ache with the intensity of emotions she feels for this woman. When they kiss it is coming home, a bolt of heat and safety she feels in her toes.

The heat is in more than her toes and B's hands are now on Betty's breasts, the towel pooled loosely around her waist as their hips grind against each other. Betty _wants_, so intensely that she almost doesn't hear the shrill beeping of her heart rate monitor. She stops B's hand before it can finish trailing down her stomach and pants against her shoulder, wishing with all her might that she didn't have to stop.

"I can't," she tells her, "I can't get too excited," and then groans a little before laughing at B's answering pout. "I'm sorry," she says, sorry for so many things, and B just kisses her forehead, her hands soft against Betty's shoulders.

They get dressed, eventually, and B makes yet another sacrifice as she pawns her mother's necklace so that they can make it to New York and Grayburn College, where Dr. Sterns and Betty's blood are waiting. B's optimism and sense of humor are a soothing balm that only sting a little against the open wounds in Betty's psyche. She doesn't know how she's going to leave the other woman behind again and shies away from every internal reminder that it isn't safe for them to be together.

B's fury at their maniac, sexist, cab driver, makes love swell up in Betty's breast even as she holds in her laughter. What did she ever do without this woman? How did she survive for so many years without B by her side? And how will she ever do so again?

Sterns has to have found the answer, the cure she needs so desperately, because Betty doesn't know if she can face the devastating loneliness of life on the run again.

Dr. Sterns is quirky, and a little too excited about her potential for Betty's comfort, but he also seems to know what he's talking about and Betty doesn't let the risks stop her. Can't let them stop her, not with so much on the line and the General out for blood.

The procedure works, although Betty has silent doubts as to which had more influence - Sterns' antidote or Betty's presence, and Sterns is even more excited afterwards. In him, Betty sees the same curiosity that led to her own downfall, with none of the checks of common sense or justified concern, and fears for what she may have unleashed in giving him access to her blood and research data.

Fears that are realized when Sterns shows them his other lab, full of Betty's replicated blood.

Her knees are weak with terror at the thought of all the damage the military could do with what is in this room. She demands the destruction of everything, and hasn't yet argued him into submission when something strikes her in the back and she feels weak for a different reason entirely. For the first time in years no monster comes bursting to the surface to save her, and she wonders if Sterns was wrong. If he did, in fact, kill the monster. Permanently.

Blonsky appears, furious, and backhands B with strength that makes Betty silently rage. But the fury is a pale shadow of itself, swamped by whatever is in her system, and Blonsky hitting her repeatedly in the face isn't enough to summon the burning tide of green. She is strapped down and surrounded by soldiers and even that doesn't change her. The bitter anger in the General's face when he spits about her stealing the monster from him is enough to produce a surge of triumph that drives away the fear she feels toward what her future holds now.

If the monster is truly gone, then B is safe, everyone is safe. But Betty, well, she's pretty sure the General means it when he says he'll lock her in a hole.

B cradles Betty's hands with her own on the chopper and Betty ignores the General's hateful stare and kisses B's fingers. If this is the last time she sees the woman she loves, she intends to make the most of every second.

One of the men left behind calls the General, fear in his voice, and suddenly they are turning around, heading back toward the University. There's a screen on the chopper, projecting what the soldiers are seeing on the ground, and the General's face goes pale and sickly as a monster appears on it. The thing is twisted and covered in spikes and there is no hint of anything but malice on its face.

Betty makes eye contact with the General, projecting every bit of bitter hate and resignation she feels as B asks what he's done.

The monster attacks and the screen goes dark and Betty can see the helpless hopelessness in the General's eyes as he orders his men to launch everything they've got in a suicide charge. She knows what she has to do and she tells him, ignoring Betty's indignant pleas as for one moment, she and the father of the woman she loves understand each other completely.

She tells B she's sorry one last time and kisses her, then lets go. The fall is quick, too quick for more than a single jagged spike of panic, and the landing is lost in a - for the first time - welcome haze of green and anger. The change into her own monster is almost lucid, also for the first time, more than just fragments of sensations and images.

There is a beast, one she must destroy, and she hates it with all the tainted rage she usually directs at herself.

The truth is that Betty hates herself for far more than the damage she does as the monster. The true damage, the true destruction of so many lives, has been caused by Betty Banner, the scientist, and it is she who is the focus of the rage that Betty takes out on the Abomination's mottled flesh.

The fight is brutal and painful and the first time Betty-the-monster has ever been in danger of losing. In the end, it is the other fundamental truth about Betty Banner that wins the day. The truth that she loves Betty Ross more than she loves herself, and will do absolutely anything, overcome any obstacle, to keep her safe.

The Abomination is subdued, and Betty flees once again, before the temporary truce between her and the General can end. The image of B crying follows her, lingering long after the aches and bruises from the battle have faded.

Things have changed. _She_ has changed, in ways more fundamental than even gamma radiation and super soldier serums can explain. She is not who she was before the incident, nor is she the combination of terrified girl and angry monster she became afterward. She is more than that, and she is beginning to accept that the monster beneath her skin is not going to go away. Which means it is time to learn how to cohabitate.

B was right. About a lot of things, and if Betty cannot rid herself of the monster, there is someone else she is tired of running from.

Six months later she sends B her mother's necklace, a kiss sealed envelope, and coordinates. She doesn't allow herself to hope.

There is a small chapel in southern Spain. The priest there was kind to Betty once, the first time she ran, and the cheese made in the area is the best she's ever eaten. When B arrives at the chapel, Betty is sitting in the front pew, wearing a white dress and holding two rings.

B laughs and says yes with her mouth pressed against Betty's, the words slipping down Betty's throat and pooling in her gut like a beacon of joy. Their rings match, simple bands of white gold although Betty's must be worn around her neck on a loose chain. The priest is beaming for the entire ceremony and none of them care that Betty forged the certificate that makes it legal.

Betty is blissfully happy. She feeds B cheese with her fingers that night, and licks wine out of the hollow of her throat before moving down her body and making her wife moan. Her wife. Those words will never stop amazing her.

"I told you that you could get excited," B whispers into Betty's inner thigh and Betty laughs, then bucks against B's mouth and lets her orgasm carry her away.

Betty has five years of running and hiding under her belt and B has common sense and a bucket list of places she wants to go. They travel through Europe, staying in hostels and fucking on trains, before dipping into Africa to look at the ruins of Alexandria.

When they reach India, they both agree to stop, falling in love with the country and the people. Neither of them are doctors in the medical sense of the word, but they are closer than many of these people have ever seen, and helping them makes Betty feel better about the ruin she left in New York.

It isn't the academic domination and contented bliss that characterized their first life together, but it is full of joy, and love, and the kind of quiet and honest understanding that only comes with shared pain. Betty wakes up every morning, grateful that she wasn't too stubborn or too scared to let B make the choice herself. She goes to bed every night telling B thank you with her lips and her hands for making the choice she did.

When the redheaded agent shows up, all dangerous smiles and persuasive words, it is B who convinces Betty to say yes. "You already stopped one monster," she whispers into Betty's ear, her voice full of love and confidence. Betty takes a deep breath, laces their fingers together, and nods.

Betty Banner knew what anger was before she learned to tie her shoes. She knew what it felt like, what it looked like, what it tasted like.

Betty Banner-Ross knows what love is. What hope is. And when to fight instead of run away.


End file.
